Father’s Day at Elk Neck State Park

My better half and I took our little travel trailer down to one of my favorite campgrounds for the Father’s Day weekend. Although rest and relaxation was my main objective, I also worked in some QRP, too.

Our destination for the weekend was Elk Neck State Park in northeastern Maryland. After getting the trailer set up on Friday night, I strapped a Jackite pole to a lantern post and set up a 29.5-foot vertical. I did a quick test and found the area to be very quiet from both an audio (i.e., quiet neighbors) and an RF perspective.

On Saturday morning, I fired up the radio while the coffee was brewing and made a few SKCC contacts. I also had a nice CW chat with Butch NM1I in Massachusetts.

After lunch, I decided to do an impromptu Parks on the Air activation. Despite having poor cell service, I managed to post my plans on POTA and WWFF-KFF Facebook pages.

Things got off to a slow start on 40M until Emily KB3VVE found me and spotted me. After that, things began to pick up a bit. Most of my contacts were on 20M but sadly, I didn’t from any of the European regulars. Before wrapping up, I dropped down to 30M and picked up a couple more.

WB3GCK activating Elk Neck State Park from outside the camper.

After about an hour, I had 13 contacts in the log, including WB9OWN in Wisconsin who worked me on both 20M and 30M. I made another 7 contacts over the course of the weekend. That’s more than enough for a valid POTA activation but I’m still about 6 contacts shy of the 44 needed for a WWFF activation. We’re planning to visit Elk Neck again in the Fall, so I should be able to make the remaining WWFF QSOs I need.

It was nice to finally have a camping trip this year with decent weather and no rain. I more than satisfied my rest and relaxation objective for the weekend.